Even a close member of my family struggles with the potable\/pottable issue. Which is it?<\/p>\n
You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve perhaps read about the almost-give-away prices of effluent water in the city. If you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re among the purchasers of recycled water, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve seen and been a part of a small army of vehicles that line up at the treatment plant south of town to buy 1,000 gallons of used water for $1.25.<\/p>\n
Sounds like a great deal, but one wonders whether anyone but a tanker owner could ever load up on the full amount that a buck-twenty-five buys. Likely, some of the people driving pickups, ask the providers, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Do you mind if I come back for the rest of the water later?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The current bargain-basement water rate translates to a quarter for 200 gallons, a nickel for 40 gallons and a penny for eight gallons.<\/p>\n
Notice a number of pickup trucks with water tanks of all sizes, and the words, applied with Magic Markers, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Non Potable\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Do not drink.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d They should also scrawl \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Non-toteable\u00e2\u20ac\u009d on their plastic tanks, as few vehicles in the Meadow City are capable of toting all that load. Well, let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s see \u00e2\u20ac\u201d if a gallon of water weighs about 8.3 pounds, a thousand gallons would weigh around 8,300 pounds, or four tons plus change.<\/p>\n
But at those prices, you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have to be affluent to buy effluent. Now here comes the vocabulary lesson:<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Affluent\u00e2\u20ac\u009d means having a great deal of money; \u00e2\u20ac\u0153effluent,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d with the accent on the first syllable, refers to liquid waste or sewage discharged into a river or sea. At the price the city is charging to allow people to wet down their lawns, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s proof you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have to be affluent to buy effluent.<\/p>\n
But here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s yet another angle: An archaic meaning of affluent, in addition to being one of los ricos, is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153water flowing freely and in great quantity.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d So what is it, affluent or effluent?<\/p>\n
Where a member of my family struggles is in the word for drinkable water. My wife, Bonnie, says it \u00e2\u20ac\u0153just makes common sense that water that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s drinkable ought to be \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcpottable,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u009d with two t\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s (rhymes with \u00e2\u20ac\u0153knottable\u00e2\u20ac\u009d). But it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not. It has nothing to do with pots. The word is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153potable,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d with a long -o, kind of how we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d expect an Englishman to pronounce \u00e2\u20ac\u0153portable.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Remember, the Brits often leave out the r\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s in their speech.<\/p>\n
Potable comes from the Latin word \u00e2\u20ac\u0153potare,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to drink. Yes, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s possible that the ancient Romans drank their water out of pots, but that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not the origin of the term.<\/p>\n
Even if you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re affluent.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2<\/p>\n
Ever see grossly exaggerated gestures, perhaps in the course of a game of Charades? Or, ask a person to gesticulate the act of driving a car. You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll notice the imaginary steering wheel, the size of a jumbo hula hoop, and the enactor, arms stretched, turning the invisible wheel almost 360 degrees.<\/p>\n
It seems to be the human condition, to exaggerate gestures, but who can blame them? That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s one way to make a point. Case in point: Watch an old movie of someone driving. You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll see that the amount of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153play\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (the free movement of the steering wheel before the rubber wheels turn) is considerable, kind of like the school bus I used to drive to the nearby community of Los Alamos. It was hard to keep it in a straight line. Then, a mechanic, Wilfred Sandoval, showed me that the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153play\u00e2\u20ac\u009d was about 90 degrees. A lot.<\/p>\n
So, cars in the olden days, most lacking power steering, had lots of play, and a U-turn took several revolutions. Today, except for leaving our driveway, or while parking, we seldom need to rotate the steering wheel even once. And for years, cars with power steering have been extra sensitive to the driver\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s touch.<\/p>\n
That lesson in physics came clear to me Monday when I saw Lee Norman Gonzales, a former teacher and well-known local musico who might not even recall the reason for my reverie. Here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what happened:<\/p>\n
Lee Norman\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mother had one of the few cars in town back in the mid-\u00e2\u20ac\u212240s. She often drove from her house on Independence Street to visit my mother, on Railroad Avenue, bringing Lee with her. One time I noticed the little guy, who couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have been older than 2, in the pilot\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s seat. As Mrs. Gonzales drove up, she had her son seated inside the spokes of the steering wheel, his legs threaded through the openings.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153How did they manage that?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Mom and I wondered. Remember, steering cars of that vintage was tantamount to navigating the Queen Mary. Lee Norman\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mom must have made some extremely wide turns to avoid flipping him, unless she simply warned him when she was turning and impelled him to hold on.<\/p>\n
I told Tony Martinez, a neighbor, about the loop-de-loops Lee Norman must have undergone, so we decided to conduct our own empirical research.<\/p>\n
Tony, only about 5, wriggled himself into the steering wheel of an abandoned car in the Railroad alley next to the tracks, while I tried to turn the wheel, with Tony in it, to simulate Lee\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ride.<\/p>\n
Nothing worked. Though easily supported by the steering wheel, Tony was way too tall to allow me to turn the wheel. Apparently, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d forgotten that the height difference between a toddler like Lee and a boy about 5 was considerable.<\/p>\n
At any rate, seeing Lee Norman and recalling his special place in his mother\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s car made me wonder whether the boy actually rode that way the entire distance from his house, or whether Mrs. Gonzales, who used to enjoy teasing my mom, planted Lee there a block or so away from our house, and simply made a beeline.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Even a close member of my family struggles with the potable\/pottable issue. Which is it? You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve perhaps read about the almost-give-away prices of effluent water in the city. If you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re among the purchasers of recycled water, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve seen and been a part of a small army of vehicles that line up at the treatment plant […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/773"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=773"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/773\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":775,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/773\/revisions\/775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}